“The evening’s last poet, Ian Burgham, blasts on to the podium in a flurry of different books. He wants to read from all of them and so he switches erratically between his collections. His darkest and newest collection of poems is called Midnight, but Ian doesn’t dwell on his sombre poems. In fact he makes those poems sing with laughter despite them being tragic and full of heartbreak. It’s the way he delivers them, in a rush as if he’s not sure we’re ready for this level of deepness, as if he’s afraid he might “drag the night down”, but he has nothing to fear as his words spark inspiration, and I can’t get up quick enough to shake his hand and to make him retell the first line of one of his poems. But by the time I get to him the poem and the first line has evaded me in the illusive way that only a train of thought can behave, so I just end up shaking his hand and congratulating him on a great evening. The icing on the cake is when Ian runs out the door as if he’s late for the bus, but then comes back two minutes later and gifts his book to a very lucky fellow student in a fluster of “because I want to…and I like you…you’re great” before he then hurries away with the wind.”
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